Mideast bombs echo for Auburn marathoner

AUBURN — When the bombs exploded near the finish line of the 2013 Boston Marathon, Bruce Mendelsohn rushed into action and tied a tourniquet around a young woman's leg, saving her life.

By Bill Doyle TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

AUBURN — When the bombs exploded near the finish line of the 2013 Boston Marathon, Bruce Mendelsohn rushed into action and tied a tourniquet around a young woman's leg, saving her life. But there's nothing the Auburn resident can do now while his brother's and cousins' families live in fear in Israel.

But there's nothing the Auburn resident can do now while his brother's and cousins' families live in fear in Israel.

"As a person of Jewish faith," Mendelsohn said, "the whole situation really saddens me. I don't think this is what God meant this to be between the sons of Abraham."

Mendelsohn's older brother Martin lives with his wife and six children in Zichron Yaakov within the outer range of Hamas missiles. Although their town has not been bombed, their house has a shelter equipped with gas masks in case it is.

Mendelsohn, 46, also has second cousins who live in Modiin and a friend who recently visited Tel Aviv, all of whom have had to seek refuge in community shelters.

"This is a part of everyday life for them," Mendelsohn said. "Can you imagine that being a part of everyday life for us? We have no concept of this."

More than 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and more than 60 Israeli soldiers have been killed since Israel and Gaza began fighting on July 8. A 72-hour humanitarian cease-fire unraveled on Friday after less than two hours.

"Of course, I am saddened by the loss of life on both sides," Mendelsohn said. "No one should live in an atmosphere of fear. That said, certainly Israelis have a sovereign right to defend themselves.

Mendelsohn spent his sophomore year of high school in Israel and visited Gaza.

"It's about fundamentally changing the ways these two entities interact," Mendelsohn said. "These guys have been killing each other for thousands of years and to think that you can sit them down at a table in Dayton or Camp David and say, 'OK, you sign, you sign, shake, kiss, it's going to be over.' Uh-uh, that isn't going to do it. This is deeply rooted hatred. Where does it stop?"

When the first bomb exploded on marathon day, Mendelsohn was at a party on the third floor near the finish line with his younger brother, Aaron, who had finished the race an hour earlier.

Mendelsohn relied on his army training in Korea and Germany in the early 1990s and he urged everyone in the room to get away from the windows in case of a second blast. As soon as he said that, the second bomb went off.

"The irony is," Mendelsohn said, "that my mother had a better chance of losing two of her sons to a bombing in Boston than she does of a losing a son in Tel Aviv."

Mendelsohn told his brother to meet him at the Harvard bridge if he wasn't back in 15 minutes; then he ran down to the street to help. He used a T-shirt to tie a tourniquet around the lower left leg of injured Northeastern University student Victoria McGrath before firefighter Jimmy Plourde took her to safety. A photo of Plourde carrying McGrath became one of the most iconic of the day. Mendelsohn also helped load wounded spectators onto wheelchairs and ambulances before police instructed him to leave the area.

Mendelsohn's tweet of a photo he took from the third-floor window of the first bomb scene — vacated, but littered with blood and debris 15 minutes after the explosion — was picked up by The Associated Press and The New York Times and went viral online. He still has that photo and others of that infamous day on his cellphone.

"It's imprinted in my soul forever," he said. "To me, what I did isn't heroic. It's expected of who we are as citizens. It differentiates us, I think, from other countries. You see all these people running into help, whether they're trained professionals or not, and they don't know what they're running into. There could have been other bombs."

Mendelsohn grew up in Washington, D.C., but moved to Auburn in 2006 to marry Dr. Heather Thompson, a Shrewsbury High Latin teacher. Mendelsohn plans to leave his position as director of communications and outreach for an engineering leadership program at MIT in Cambridge to become director of communications and marketing at Nichols College in Dudley in September.

"I had never really felt part of this area until that (marathon) day," Mendelsohn said. I felt like a visitor. I felt like a Washingtonian. But then after that day, I really felt like I was from here. I felt like I had contributed to this area and to our community in an indelible way."

Mendelsohn was featured in People magazine, but he wasn't among those who where recognized with civic awards.

"I didn't do it for the awards," he said. "I did it because of what was expected me as a citizen."

A few days after the marathon, the Today Show was on hand when Mendelsohn, Plourde and McGrath were reunited at Tufts Medical Center. McGrath's doctor credited Mendelsohn with saving her life, saying that she would have bled to death within a minute if the tourniquet hadn't been applied.

"I'm on national TV," Mendelsohn recalled, "and all I can say is, 'wow,' and I'm supposed to be Mr. Communicator. That's when the gravity of what I had done really hit me."

Coincidentally, while Mendelsohn spoke about the marathon with a reporter inside a Starbucks store near the Auburn Mall, he spotted Boston Marathon legend Dick Hoyt in the parking lot and renewed acquaintances with him. Hoyt has pushed his son Rick in a wheelchair in 32 Boston Marathons.

Mendelsohn has run in 18 marathons, but he ran Boston for the first time this year. When he stopped at the site of the first bomb, spectators urged him to keep going, saying that he didn't have much more to run, but he purposely stopped to kneel and say a prayer.

After Mendelsohn finished the marathon, he put all of his marathon memorabilia in a box in his basement.

"I think that's the way a lot of people feel," he said. "It's still a part of us, but it's not something we fixate on."

Unfortunately, the same can't be said of what's happening in Gaza and Israel.

"The people in the Middle East, they can't move on," Mendelsohn said. "This is a part of their life every single day. It's infused in their DNA."

Contact Bill Doyle at williamdoyle@telegram.com. Follow him on Twitter @BillDoyle15